[Deck] Death and Taxes

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Originally Posted by gfernandes

I have seen some matches of death and taxes players and noticed that when players have both Thalia and Stoneforge in hand, some decide to play 2nd turn Thalia and some Stoneforge. My question is in which matchups you should play Thalia or Stoneforge if you have both in hand at second turn?

I have learned a lot with the discussions in this forum. Thanks for the input.

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It depends on the matchup but usually it's the matchups that tend to be heavy on creatures and where Thalia is usually bad. These matchups would include Elves (Thalia is shit in this matchup), Eldrazi (Batterskull is key in this matchup, alternatively Jitte when you can set it up with Mirran Crusader) and Merfolk (any equipment is good here and SoFaI can help to race TNN which is the greatest obstacle, especially when it quickly gets copied by Phantasmal Images) for me and under some circumstances Loam-based decks.

Against Eldrazi for instance, I'd lead with 2nd Turn SFM any day if I don't have Vial. However, if a Thought-Knot Seer then steals the Batterskull, it usually feels embarrasing and it costs you the game then very often.

Well, I think it depends on the matchup and how has been the start of both players. There are situations in which it's obvious like facing Storm, Sneak & Show or Elves, but in others you should play around mulligans, opponent's cantripping before the situation, Daze, if you have a T3 Karakas to protect the Thalia, the equipment you'd search playing around spot removal... but first of all what is your main plan, your role into the game, if you'll try a tempo or a grindy game.

If you know the matchup you're facing and your best bet is Batterskull protected could be better hold Stoneforge Mystic until you force your opponent to spend some resources in other threats, trying to play Stoneforge into a clean field at late game. However, other times Thalia + Karakas could be fine as against Miracles, and with Stoneforge you usually fetch Sword of X/Y so maybe you can let Stoneforge be killed because the equipment is not of the cost of Batterskull and can be casted easier.

I think there is no any rule about this. It depends on your experience and your feelings at the moment.

You should also factor in parameters like having a Cavern of Souls and what the opponent has opened with. If my Delver opponent has opened with Ponder, I'd go for Thalia. If he has opened with Delver - Go, I'd probably hesitate to slam Thalia (depending on whether I have a flyer such as Avenger/Flickerwisp or StoP to deal with it). Either way getting your 2nd Turn play dazed is pretty awful. The best thing you can do is Wasteland, StoP in that case.

Having redundant copies of something also plays a role, if you have 2 Thalia (which happens from time to time) and the opponent has done nothing terrifying on his 1st Turn, you can mindlessly slam one on turn 2. If it gets countered by Daze or handled, it still throws back the opponent by 1 Turn and you can play another Thalia on Turn 3, probably even backed up with Karakas which is obviously sexy.

But in general you have to have a feeling for the matchup and the situations. I also had games where Thalia screwed my Loam-opponent together with a Revoker on Mox Diamond, but these scenarios happen rather seldom.

As a sage friend says, D&T is like a puzzle so, with this, the more experience you have, the more you'll know how to make the puzzle :wink:

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Originally Posted by Koke_MTG

As a sage friend says, D&T is like a puzzle so, with this, the more experience you have, the more you'll know how to make the puzzle :wink:

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This is very true. Not to say other decks don't take practice to be very good with, but death and taxes takes time to get good with. Some decks like delver and sneak and show you may not have to play optimally and you'll still win, but DnT is a decks that needs optimal play and the more you play with it, the better you get with it

Here's my current configuration of Imperial Taxes and it's been doing pretty well for me.

I'm really loving the 3/3 Recruiter/Magus. Especially against Miracles, I know they have a lot of Basics, which kind of sucks, but the Magus shuts down their fetches, and by doing that you shut down a lot of the power of the deck.

I have the Faerie Macabre as a tutorable/reusable grave hate piece until I can get a more permanent solution in Extraction, it's great as a temporary fix against things like P. Fire, LftL, Dredge pieces, even Snapcaster and DRS targets.
Crackdown has proven to be an excellent card, Makes some of the more challenging things to handle a lot easier, at least until there's an Abrupt Decay, the other cards should be fairly self explanatory.

As always, I'll further explain my choices if anyone asks me,
Happy Taxing.


1 Fiend Hunter
4 Flickerwisp
1 Mangara of Corondor
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Mother of Runes
3 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3 Imperial Recruiter
3 Magus of the Moon

4 AEther Vial
3 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa's Jitte

2 Cavern of Souls
3 Karakas
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
1 Arid Mesa
2 Flooded Strand
1 Marsh Flats
1 Windswept Heath
1 Plateau
3 Plains

Side:
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Containment Priest
1 Crackdown
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Kor Firewalker
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Faerie Macbre
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Cunning Sparkmage
2 Sudden Demise
1 Sword of Light and Shadow

Interesting sideboard, and good to have another person testing 3 SfM no Batterskull. I feel like the only popular match-ups where I'm really scared not to have a Batterskull main are Burn and Eldrazi. You shore up Eldrazi a bit w/ 3 Magus main + Crackdown and Burn w/ your SB. Do you think that Forge Tender might be better off as a second Firewalker?

Two Containment Priest seems excessive when you can tutor for the effect, I think it's fine for Mono-W, but I'd rather have an additional tutor target or another copy of Ethersworn, which has more general application.

How has SoLS been? Faerie Macbre seems like a pretty clever idea, I hadn't thought of that as a tutor target, I might try that.

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Originally Posted by iatee

Interesting sideboard, and good to have another person testing 3 SfM no Batterskull. I feel like the only popular match-ups where I'm really scared not to have a Batterskull main are Burn and Eldrazi. You shore up Eldrazi a bit w/ 3 Magus main + Crackdown and Burn w/ your SB. Do you think that Forge Tender might be better off as a second Firewalker?

Two Containment Priest seems excessive when you can tutor for the effect, I think it's fine for Mono-W, but I'd rather have an additional tutor target or another copy of Ethersworn, which has more general application.

How has SoLS been? Faerie Macbre seems like a pretty clever idea, I hadn't thought of that as a tutor target, I might try that.

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I've always love SoLaS, it's fantastic to recur Forge-tender (it's one of the few ways for this deck to not auto die to Progenitus, especially with SoLaS recursion). Forge-Tender also can stop sweepers such as Pyroclasm or burn spells like PoP if need be. I'm enjoying the 1/1 split. Against Eldrazi, I actually prefer Jitte anyway, kills Mimics and pumps our guys large enough to handle their other threats/gain us life. Also it's easily castable the same turn you tutor it, unlike the Batterskull that they can TKS away. It does sometimes suck against Burn game 1 that it's not there, but at the same time, blowing up Mystic before we can get Batterskull online isn't exactly hard for Burn to do. Post board SoLaS helps with Life gain and the potential recursion of Forge-Tender, also tends to pump out of bolt range, at least 9 of my cards.

As far as the Containment Priest is concerned, it helps a lot against Sneak and Show, Show and Tell (most play 1 Emmy main and 2-3 in the board that they normally side as Thalia can easily keep them from winning the turn they try to go off), and it also hurts Elves. For some odd reason they like to N.O. for Craterhoof.

I sometimes want a 3rd Canonist, but at the same time I don't always board them every tourney I play. However with that said, The Priest often does come in against the same match ups. Only major difference is the Sneak and Show match.

So apparently this pretty sweet 5c Humans deck won the Bazaar of Moxen vintage event:

Main Deck 60
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Scab-Clan Berserker
3 Dark Confidant
3 Mantis Rider
2 Grand Abolisher
3 Mayor of Avabruck
2 Reflector Mage
3 Containment Priest
3 Qasali Pridemage
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland

Sideboard 15
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Containment Priest
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Reflector Mage
2 Wasteland
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Stony Silence
3 Izzet Staticaster

Obviously Vintage is a very different format, one where you can play 16 rainbow lands and Burn players don't exist. Still, there might be some ideas to borrow. The two cards that interest me are Reflector Mage and especially Scab-Clan Berserker. Reflector Mage seems like it could be a fun card for anyone toying with a U/W tempo build. The fact that you can't bounce your own creatures hurts, since it would provide some Flickerwisp-style value otherwise. Ultimately I guess it's not really that much better than Fiend Hunter or Banisher Priest, sometimes better but often worse.

Scab-Clan on the other hand - I dunno, could be kinda great as a SB card for Imperial. Has anyone tried it yet? I've thought about it before but never tried it simply because I didn't have one around. The two issues are - RR obviously and 'Does it do enough in legacy?'. Let's say in an imaginary world the mana cost were 1WW. What do you bring it in against? Combo obviously, but it's maybe too slow to be a reliably good sb card vs fast-combo, so it's kinda a 'support' SB card. It does survive Dread of Night and even Massacre.

Great against slower combo like Omni/Enchantress. Burn - I guess? It's not that hard to kill and usually requires making yourself Price-able to cast it, but if you get it online it helps you race and they usually won't have untapped blockers.

Miracles - seems pretty good actually. I've always wanted a haste creature to help against a live Jace w/ no Vial and if they don't have any immediate answer it's a great clock on its own.

Reflector mage apparently has merit in vintage, but it will not be better than what it replaces in Legacy. I have played man-o-war enough (and as recently as last week) to tell you that it is not a high impact effect.

The scab-clan dude is more interesting though. My biggest pause is the question of just how handy is 2 damage per spell compared with alternatives like Thalia (actually it does not compete with thalia for a spot) and Canonist which do not give the opponent the choice to further their game plan at the cost of life. They just can't go off. Since we do not have burn to make the opponent pay for going too low, this seems like it will never be better than what it replaces. I would not write it off entirely though, as this card has a lot of pertinent text beyond just the shock damage. Interesting card, really. I want to use it in something.

What I have been liking is good old Fiend Hunter. The big butt is important, it is excellent tempo, and has that neat interaction with Flickerwisps. In the past I have been much less pleased with this card, but it is also wonderful against Eldrazi.

Yeah I don't think it replaces Thalia/Ethersworn, but it definitely ends the game if you play it turn 3 after one of those. The fact that it survives Massacre is huge, since a lot of the time that's the answer to 'Well how do I lose?' once you have a favorable board state vs black combo. Scab Clan is a *really* good clock. If you have it on board for 2 turns it does 5 damage on its own + 2-4 damage from the opponent's durdling.

The RR downside might make it hard though, ensuring you have RR on turn 3 requires totally tearing apart the manabase for this deck to ever cast it t3/t4 vs fast combo. It might only be viable in some other build that doesn't play Ports. It is hard to figure out the math when you have to incorporate Vials / Magus-as-mana-fixing, since it's viable t4 with either.

I played around with 5c humans in modern for a bit but it ended up feeling like just a worse linear aggro deck. I think in legacy it would feel a bit like Zoo which isn't played much anymore either.

I like the idea of Berserker, and I think I'll try one in my board next time around, probably over the Crackdown, which I really like, but it doesn't always immediately impact the board state, which the Berserker certainly can, and as I play 3 Recruiter, it'll be easier to for me to find it. I currently have 2 Cavern and 1 Plateau with 5 fetches, may make the 5th fetch into a second Plateau to help with the mana instead of relying on having a Cavern with a Plateau, having a Vial on three, or having a Magus resolve/stay around long enough.

I can work on testing it out on Tuesday as that's my weekly Magic night and I go to hangout and play test Legacy, working on helping my friends prepare and I will likely no be able to go myself...

Scab-Clan Berserker is a very interesting card, but I can't emphasize enough how hard RR will be. I have tried 1RR cards in the Imperial build before: I ran Prophetic Flamespeaker because double-strike is massive CA with that card and equipped it is stupid. Over a several dozen matches I was almost never able to get it into play without Vial, even with 5 fetches, 2 Plateau and 2 Cavern of Souls. As good as this card is, I don't see it being reliably playable.

Hey all,
What do y'all think about Goblin Rabblemaster in the RW version? It gets you a token with haste every turn and boosts itself for each token in play. You can give it protection with Mother of Runes to protect it from blockers and suddenly you've got a pretty fast clock.

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Originally Posted by LegacyIsAnEternalFormat

Hey all,
What do y'all think about Goblin Rabblemaster in the RW version? It gets you a token with haste every turn and boosts itself for each token in play. You can give it protection with Mother of Runes to protect it from blockers and suddenly you've got a pretty fast clock.

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It's certainly a fast clock against an opponent without blockers or much removal, but it doesn't disrupt or hinder most opponent's game plan so it feels like it wouldn't do much besides be a beater.

I'd probably want Brimaz even if I had the red to cast Rabblemaster.

Can't tutor for Brimaz.

I think it's probably fine, I definitely like it vs Miracles and you'd probably bring it in against combo decks where you want a super fast clock. I don't think it's better than Pia/Kiran vs Miracles and can't think of any other matchup where it would really be a trump card.

Thinking of trying a Fiendslayer Paladin in the SB soon.

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Originally Posted by iatee

Can't tutor for Brimaz.

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Whoops, yeah. Someone doesn't play red. :laugh:

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Originally Posted by iatee

Thinking of trying a Fiendslayer Paladin in the SB soon.

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Nice, I forgot about this guy.... I wanted to try him out a long time ago. Let me know how it goes, it seems really good.